


going back home

by yourhandiheld



Series: charting our stars [1]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3188192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourhandiheld/pseuds/yourhandiheld
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gintoki wakes up on a rainy Tuesday morning to a text message. </p><p>(or, that modern au where gintoki moves to the city and leaves his country-boy life behind.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	going back home

**Author's Note:**

> the first of (hopefully many) little interrelated (mainly ginzura) oneshots of an imagined modern gintama life. i have most relationships and character backstories as well as timelines and geography figured out, but those will be revealed in time hehe!! since i draw more than i write, i'll hopefully also be illustrating a lot of things relating to this series, so hmu or check me on tumblr (@ yourhandiheld) if you want to!!!
> 
> and, of course, written for my kyoudie♡

Gintoki wakes up on a rainy Tuesday morning to a text message.  
  
-  
  
News travels fast in small towns. Or at least, that is how Gintoki remembers it. There is probably a saying about that, somewhere, because it seems that there are a thousand sayings about the country that not even he can be bothered to slip up and into his mind for potential future use as a comeback or insult or excuse or something-or-other.  
  
This is what he thinks about as he scratches his head on a damp, grey morning, blinking bloodshot eyes against the harsh brightness of his cellphone's screen (which, to this day, he's yet to figure out how to manually dim - it's a tough life for analog folk, you know).  
  
He doesn't think about the pitter-patter of rain hitting his window. He doesn't think about the plink-plink of rainwater dripping down and into his room from the tiny crack he'd accidentally left open. He doesn't think about how ass-tits-shit-fuck-fucking- _shit_ cold he is (and he is; not even the city, it seemed, was safe from summer storms). He closes his eyes, presses the palm of his hand against his forehead, and remembers country air - the breeze, the sun, the fragrant smell of rampant left-to-grow grass - remembers country folk - with missing teeth, with smiling faces, smiling eyes - remembers country noise - the rustling of leaves, the cicadas singing their one-day-song, the people asking after each other, asking everything -  
  
He stops thinking then, shuts off his phone, and decides to come in late to work today.  
  
-  
  
Gintoki doesn't exactly know how his ease of attracting people to him came to be, but it's not an unwelcome ability.  
  
He'd heard the usual warnings, of course, days and weeks and months ago on the long train ride from Hagi to the airport, on the even longer flight from there to Tokyo, from stranger mouths slurring thick with country accents.  
  
"The city can be a lonely place for people like us."  
  
He didn't exactly know what 'us' was supposed to mean. He didn't reply to that, either, not even in his usual, dully clever way. Instead, he'd dug a finger into his ear and looked out at the passing scenery, wanting nothing more than to let everything just pass him by until he came to his full, final stop, at his destination beyond familiar faces and familiar roads.  
  
He wanted Tokyo to hit him hard and leave him reeling. What he wanted, along with a fresh start, a fresh outlook, and a fresh new life, was for the city to leave him stunned long enough not to remember that going back home was an option that existed, always existed.  
  
In the city, Gintoki expected what he'd expected: the noise, the claustrophobia, the neon lights and the back-and-forth of people going from A to B that never seemed to stop. He braced himself for the loneliness he'd been warned about the night he settled into a dingy 1LDK apartment atop a dingy city bar. The hustle and bustle and hyped-up, perpetual heartbeat of Tokyo didn't stop for him, not even at some time somewhere past two in the morning, when Gintoki fully took in the sudden weight of realizing that he was in a place away from home, different from home.  
  
The absent, distant feeling that settled into his bones then wasn't exactly what Gintoki would call loneliness, but he never was good at putting names to things that made him uncomfortable.  
  
He wasn't good at being lonely, either.  
  
-  
  
On his nineteenth birthday, which Gintoki had meant to celebrate on his own (meaning, with taped reruns of One Park, two boxes of cake all for himself, and maybe a bottle of booze he could probably have pilfered out of the old hag downstairs because, you know, it was his _birthday_ ), the day (evening, night, early morning) was spent crammed into his apartment, surrounded by too many people who made too much noise, which was a disaster.  
  
At some point, likely in and around the midnight mark, Gintoki had snuck off into his room where Shinpachi had taken Kagura to go to sleep.  
  
"Who brings kids to a teenager's party, anyway?" Gintoki asked aloud, settling against the wall beneath the window, beside where Shinpachi and Kagura lay. Small as he was, Shinpachi was already far better than Gintoki was, given how he'd pulled out the guest futon on his own and had laid it out flat to sleep on. Gintoki ruffled the boy's hair with a hand, then Kagura's bright orange crown. "Ah - I guess it's adult now, huh."  
  
Without understanding how (and without questioning the logistics behind it - Gintoki had learned early that city life involved a lot of ignoring), Shinpachi and Kagura slept on, unbothered by the (awful, _awful_ ) karaoke and laughter and general cacophony going on in his cramped living room.  
  
A birthday surrounded by so many people, in so short a time after moving away from the country, should feel anything but lonely - he felt itchy even thinking the word. Gintoki rarely ever felt that way, not when he had everything he needed either at his disposal or within reasonable distance for him to go fetch (like discounted copies of Jump at the convenience store he worked at, like parfaits from the café near the Kodoukan Dojo, like x-rated videos he could rent from Tsutaya's).  
  
But that must be what that uncomfortable, sour, slippery feeling in his gut was, Gintoki reasoned, freshly nineteen now that it was 30-something minutes past midnight.  
  
Of course, he'd known a long time ago that loneliness had nothing to do with the number of people who came to your birthday party. Nor did it have any correlation with the number of people who were willing to hang out with you (although this was the scale by which most people seemed to judge it) even if you picked your nose (Gintoki did) and generally lacked the money to pay your rent (Gintoki did), for a round of drinks, for just about anything (Gintoki did, _did)_. He remembers, still, how loud and busy his house back home was, even when Shouyou had passed away, even after Shouyou had passed away, and how lonely he'd felt in spite of them all.  
  
It was only after thirty more minutes of meandering around in his room letting his poor eardrums have a bit of a break that Gintoki headed back out into the throng of people wreaking havoc in his living room.  
  
It had nothing to do with him restlessly going through his cell phone's inbox, down through the letters K and Z, waiting for something, a message maybe, waiting for -  
  
Well. No use thinking about it anymore.  
  
-  
  
(At quarter past seven in the morning, Gintoki woke up blearily to his phone buzzing. It took him a full minute of fumbling around to get it on and open (and his head was killing him, how much had he had to drink?).  
  
He read, _Happy birthday, Paa-head._ , a jerky, awful text with full stops and capitals. He then promptly shoved his cell phone under his pillow and went right back to sleep.  
  
Gintoki knew he was smiling, but he didn't have to _admit_ it, dammit.)  
  
-  
  
It's Shinpachi, back in present time, who points out that his cell phone is buzzing.  
  
"Good ears," Gintoki says. "Do your new glasses improve your hearing too?"  
  
He only narrowly dodges the embarrassed jab that comes shooting at his face. Shinpachi, who seems to be getting taller every day, has been getting bolder lately, although 'bolder' can be easily replaced with 'more easily flustered', as all fledgeling children come to be as they near the dangerous phase of life called puberty.  
  
But his phone is buzzing, and his phone won't stop, so Gintoki sets down his bōgu, shoving a hand into the small locker before him to fish around for the offending object. It's not any hard to find; within seconds, he locates the buzzing, warbling thing, flicks it open only to properly turn it off.  
  
"Ah - you're not going to check it?"  
  
"Nah. I expect it's only more pure maidens texting me to return their fluttery school-girl feelings."  
  
"Liar! Girls don't like perms. Ane-ue said so herself."  
  
Sore point accurately (and painfully) hit, Gintoki settles for ruffling the boy's hair till the movement knocks his new glasses askew. "I don't want to hear that from a four-eyed, sis-con brat. Now c'mon, maybe with those glasses on you'll see what I mean when I tell you your footwork stinks."  
  
Shinpachi sputters the way he always does, runs after Gintoki the way he always does, and that makes it all the easier for him to forget, for a moment, the reason he's being so vehemently, cellularly bothered.  
  
-  
  
His phone continues to buzz and beep for the rest of the day. In spite of being vexed beyond all measure, Gintoki insists on ignoring the mounting accumulation of messages (it is at 15 unread by noon, 57 an hour after that, and a disgusting 165 two more hours later). This method of coping (ignoring, _ignoring!)_ works well for him, as Gintoki is admittedly masterful in the art of letting things go. The same can't be said for Hijikata, shorter-fused and, well, shorter, who has already breached the border beyond fed up.  
  
"Put that shit on silent before I break it!"  
  
"Ah," Gintoki says, as though a revelation from God himself had shone down upon him.  
  
Right.  
  
 _Silent_.  
  
-  
  
From what he remembers, he hadn't so much stumbled upon the Shimuras as the Shimuras had stumbled upon him. As in, the then-nine Shimura Shinpachi had tripped over his foot during a dojo tour that Oki-kun from Sho-Tokyo forced Gintoki to go to. Gintoki, then-barely hanging onto his eighteen years of age, consequently slammed nose-first onto the floor and swore so colourfully it shocked the then-shorter, then-glasses-less Shinpachi out of his fit of tears.  
  
Shimura Tae, then-barely jailbait due to her flat chest, proceeded to beat Gintoki silly for having sworn within her brother's earshot, which Gintoki didn't quite understand - Shinpachi had been crying harder over his scraped knee, the kid's nose was even bleeding, _his nose was bleeding, where the hell are your priorities_ , what the hell kind of gorilla sister was she?  
  
That was how they met.  
  
And then the rest fell into place without Gintoki really knowing how it came to be.  
  
-  
  
Falling into place involved a lot of things, like transferring from the then-open Sho-Tokyo Dojo (it was closed now, building space replaced by a far more profitable convenience store filled with more booze than actual items of convenience) to the Shimura's Kodoukan. Like teaching Shinpachi kendo when that idiot Hajime (he refused to call him Obi-one - it felt blasphemous and downright western- _stupid_ ) couldn't. Like taking over for that gorilla Kondo when he was busy cramming to pass test after drill after test to get that police badge he so badly coveted. Like meeting Hijikata and proceeding to hate Hijikata the very second after meeting him. Like meeting Zenzou at the manga section of the bookstore near his morning part-time job and proceeding to pretend to forget who Zenzou was because Zenzou was funny when he was pissed. Like meeting Sacchan and then wishing he kind of never had because he didn't exactly have the money to file for a report - like meeting what felt like half of dirty, scummy, bright-lighted, _beautiful_ Kabukichou's inhabitants.  
  
It all came together, messily, loudly, bit-by-Kabukichou-sized-bit, the way chaotic puzzles did when given to complete as a group. And if there were still parts and pieces missing (and there were, particularly a wig-shaped one, ink-spill black, slotting in that empty space beside Gintoki's own glimmering silver), well, Gintoki expected them to slot into place one day or another.  
  
-  
  
"I'll break it," Hijikata snarls. "I fucking will."  
  
"Now, now, Hijikata- _kun_ , there's no need to be violent - "  
  
"Don't you even know how to put your own damn phone on mute?!"  
  
"I'm from the country, you know, life wasn't this complex over there - "  
  
"There are cell phones in the country, asshole! I'm from the country!"  
  
"Ah, that explains your shitty accent. Forgive me. I thought you had a vocal disability this whole time - ow, ow, ow, _mother **fuck**_ \- ! I give, I give! Let go of me before I grab that stick out of your ass and beat you with it!"  
  
-  
  
The rest of the day goes swimmingly well, if by swimmingly one meant that Gintoki had only gotten stuck in the rain for fifteen miserable minutes, time during which he'd spent in a mad dash to get to his shitty apartment before he could catch a pneumonia-ridden death. Considering he'd come home in sopping, rain-drenched clothes and felt like he was drowning in shitty sky piss, 'swimmingly' felt an accurate term.  
  
He doesn't check his (now on silent) phone when he fishes it out of his only barely dry pockets, doesn't check it when its screen flashes as he watches the News (tomorrow's garbage day - he should remember that), doesn't check it before drifting off to sleep that night (he's got an early shift tomorrow at the convenience store, then a longer-than-usual one at the dojo, damn that shimura gorilla-girl), doesn't check it in the middle of the night, when its screen comes to life in staccato beats of harsh digital blue.  
  
By morning, his cell phone dies a premature 1% battery life death.  
  
That's fine by him.  
  
-  
  
All jokes aside, not even he can ignore the messages (and messager) for any longer than he already has (a grand total of an entire day and a half - even if the drawn-out annoyance of it has made it feel like much, much longer). So, again, with practiced ease, he flicks his phone on and jabs on the inbox button -  
  
 **bakamoto [07:06AM]:** SO R U COMING HAHAHA (LOL)  
  
 **bakamoto [07:08AM]:** KINTOKI KINTOKI I KNO UR HOME AHAHAHA R YOU IGNORING ME (SAD)  
  
 **bakamoto [07:09AM]:** JK IM NOT RLY SAD (LOL) BUT AAAH R U IGNORING ME AFTER ALL????? AHAHA  
  
 **bakamoto [07:35AM]:** IS UR CELL ON MUTE HAHAHA DID U FORGET HOW 2 TRN THE RINGER BACK ON (ROFLMAO)  
  
 **bakamoto [07:36AM]:** OLD MAN JIROU NEEDS 2 KNO HAHAHAH  
  
 **bakamoto [07:48AM]:** U DIDNT 4GET DID U??? HEY!!!! KINTOKI  
  
 **bakamoto [07:51AM]:** U DO KNO RITE????  
  
\- only to jab **Delete All ?** / **Yes** and proceed to launch his cell phone as far away as possible.  
  
-  
  
Gintoki later contemplates chucking the affronting device out the window.  
  
The only reason he doesn't is because he's enough low on rent money as it is; he doesn't need the old hag barking at him this early in the morning (pushing aside the fact that hardly anyone would constitute half past ten as 'early').  
  
All the same, he sighs and settles for tossing his phone clean across the room and leaving it there.  
  
News travels fast across small towns, sure, but Tokyo isn't a small town and shouldn't really count as a town at all, given what Tokyo is.  
  
He knows, however, that to Sakamoto, every town is a small one until he's trekked entirely through it, and here he is having slandered the newfound peace and second home Gintoki has spent the past two years making his. Sakamoto isn't even here and Gintoki feels aggravation welling up with every beat of every footstep outside his window (every _clack_ of heels on concrete translates, horrifyingly, to an imagined _Ha ha ha_ in his head).  
  
He isn't even sure where Sakamoto is anymore - not that he really cares to keep track of the Walking Talking Afro's zipping, globe-trotting whereabouts. What he wants to know is why Sakamoto's torturing him so much, with all these texts and voice messages and IMs and emails and annoyances. Gintoki didn't even know his phone could do that. (It had taken a very smug Sougo to show him how to access the email function and illegally use minimal data without getting slammed with fees for out-of-plan usage - honestly, teenagers these days).  
  
Bombarded by more texts (not all Sakamoto, but because of yesterday's out-of-nowhere messaging assault, Gintoki views everyone who texts him with aggrieved hostility), Gintoki decides not to bring his cell to the dojo with him today.  
  
-  
  
It's a bad idea.  
  
Kondo makes it after all, even when the gorilla had said - he'd sworn, dammit - that he wouldn't be able to, _could you take over for me, please-puh-leeeze?_ Which leaves Gintoki standing around in proper (proper!) kendogi and hakama, all other equipment abandoned now that he's not really needed here. He clocks the hours in, anyway, intent on weaselling out even minimal pay from Hajime's miserly wallet even if he's not doing anything - which, not his fault; Kondo's.  
  
So, as rows of children swing shinai in unison, Sougo smugly-proudly up front and center, Gintoki finds himself itching with nothing to do.  
  
He could be playing angry birds right now. He felt annoyed enough to be fuelled for it. He could be playing candy crush until he could actually afford real candy to crush (with his mouth, obviously). He could be texting that idiot Sakamoto and getting things ready for the -  
  
Well, maybe not.  
  
-  
  
At the end of practice, Sougo says to him, "You don't look too good. Did you stay up late watching porn?"  
  
Without pause, Gintoki reaches out, pinching the honey-haired 12-year-old brat on the nose and twisting enough for Sougo to sputter out, "Ow, ow, ow."  
  
"You're a hundred years too early to be talking about porn, little boy. Who taught you that, haa? Was it the gorilla? Mayora? Gori-Mayora?"  
  
"Ah, you see, I was born with this knowledge, and that's what made me so powerful that God had to punish me by putting me into this tiny body - in reality, I'm built like S-Goku. The 'S' stands for 'sadist' - "  
  
Gintoki pinches harder. Honestly, _teenagers_ these days.  
  
-  
  
It's a bad idea, but Gintoki goes through with it anyway.  
  
 **Me [06:34PM]:** STOP TEXTING ME YOU AFRO BITCH  
  
To his horror, although really he shouldn't be any bit surprised, Sakamoto's reply is near-instantaneous.  
  
 **bakamoto [06:34PM]:** AHAHAHAH H A THERE U AR!E!!!  
 **bakamoto [06:35PM]:** I THOT U WERE IGNORING ME  
 **bakamoto [06:35PM]:** !!! A HAHA AHAA  
 **Me [06:37PM]:** IM BUSY TOO YANNO GIN-SAN GETS BUSY TOO YANNO?!?!  
 **bakamoto [06:38PM]:** AHA HA HA WOWW RLY???  
 **bakamoto [06:38PM]:** I GUESS MIRACLES DO HAPPEN HAHAHAHHAA  
 **bakamoto [06:38PM]:**   (lol) JK  
  
It feels rather backwards, to be twenty and still fervently yelling at someone in all caps via text message, but then again this is what the modern world is like, and just because real adults (of which he is not yet a part, according to the old hag) frown down upon kaomojis and shorthands and text-speech doesn't mean he has to go down that path, too.  
  
So, Gintoki continues to respond immediately, as a level-headed adult (but only in age).  
  
 **Me [06:40PM]:** JUST TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT ASSHOLE  
 **bakamoto [06:41PM]:** (lol) KINTOKI R U MAD???? AHAHAH AH AHA A (sweat)  
 **Me [06:42PM]:** WHY ARE YOU SWEATING??! STOP USING PARENTHESES.  
 **Me [06:42PM]:** DONT YOU HAVE A LIFE STOP BOTHERING ME AND TEXT YOUR OTHER FRIENDS  
 **bakamoto [06:43PM]:** AHAHA HA HA HA IM JUST KEEPING AN EYE OUT 4 U ;)  
 **bakamoto [06:43PM]:** THAT WAS A WINK BTW (lol) (wink)  
 **Me [06:44PM]:** OI STOP HARRASSING ME  
 **bakamoto [06:44PM]:** (lol) K KINTOKI (smile)  
  
It takes roughly 15 more minutes of yelling at each other (Gintoki expressing himself yelling at Sakamoto via all caps; Sakamoto expressing himself being himself at Gintoki via all caps) until, finally, they get to the point, when by then, Gintoki has lost all capacity to be mad or annoyed anymore. And if that was Sakamoto's goal from the very beginning, Gintoki would have to privately grant that that was clever as hell.  
  
But Sakamoto is an idiot. (As is he, really - couldn't they have just talked this over the phone instead?)  
  
 **bakamoto [07:06PM]:** SO, UR COMING RIGHT?  
 **bakamoto [07:06PM]:** JIROU-JII-SAN NEEDS 2 KNO.  
 **bakamoto [07:07PM]:** NOT THAT UR DOJO'S A MESS OR NYTHING BUT HE SAYS GIVEN THE CIRCUMSTANCES HED RATHE  
 **bakamoto [07:07PM]:** R CLEAN IT IF U COME. WITH EVERYOEN COMING TO VISIT, WE ALL FIGURE WE CAN USE URS  
 **bakamoto [07:07PM]:** 2 HOUSE PPL FROM OUT OF TOWN  
 **bakamoto [07:08PM]:** YKNO?  
  
Gintoki decides that it's been a long day, and turns in early.  
  
 **Me [7:17PM]:** yeah. ill be there  
  
-  
  
Sakamoto's an asshole. An asshole. An afro-headed _asshole_.  
  
 **bakamoto [12:24AM]:** zuras going to be glad ur there  
  
That message, and all the bakamoto-labeled ones that come after, are ignored without further thought.  
  
-  
  
Gintoki feels little remorse dumping his classes at the dojo onto Kondo, who passed all his latest exams. Hajime has given him the a-okay to leave for the week, even if Gintoki had expressly said he really only needs two or three days. The thing about idiots is that most of them are soft-hearted, and Hajime is no exception.  
  
Sougo sounds bizarrely put out that he'll be away, but the fondness that had settled after the affirmation that he was is quickly chased away by child-wide eyes affixing him while a sadistic mouth spewed out horror stories about planes crashing and trains haunted by vengeful infant-oni. It takes all of Gintoki's willpower not to punch him in the face, which would be bad, considering child abuse in spite of the fact that he's not really an adult (in spirit) even if he is (in age).  
  
Shinpachi, too thoughtful for his own good, produces a bag with gifts inside. Child-gifts, sort of, as they consist mostly of conbeni snacks and Tokyo-made trinkets, but they are gifts all the same, and Gintoki almost doesn't know what to do with them.  
  
"Gifts!" Shinpachi says, by means of explanation. "For your family, and everyone back in your home. It's not like you'd bother to bring any back, right?"  
  
-  
  
 _He's right,_ Gintoki thinks, in the waiting area of his plane's gate, pilfering some hard candies from Shinpachi's bag of goodies. As if he could afford omiyage for those bumpkin assholes with his 300-yen budget, anyway.  
  
-  
  
In some backwards turn of events, Gintoki spends the entire flight to Iwami Kūko Airport thinking too hard about things he probably shouldn't be thinking too hard about. He thinks about the blue of the sea, the white of the clouds, the deep greens of his country's forests as holes and pockets in the cloud-blankets below the plane allow this birds-eye view of trees to peek through. He thinks, this wasn't how I imagined myself coming back, and it isn't.  
  
Because even people like Gintoki have plans, even if those plans are uncharacteristically idealistic, hazy at the edges with rose-colored tints of dreamy, perfection-wants.  
  
Like, coming back home at an older age, with more money in the bank, with more to his name and more stories to tell (even if, in just the two years he's lived in Tokyo, he's accumulated more than a lifetime's share of tales to tell).  
  
Like, coming back with plans to settle back down in his hometown for good.  
  
Like, coming back with _someone_ -  
  
-  
  
Four days ago, Gintoki had woken up on a grim, grey morning to a grim, gloomy text message.  
  
Waking up, he didn't think much of it, other than _I hate the world and the feeling is mutual_ , and _Fuck this shitty text-tone, why does Shinpachi always set it to Otsuu-chan?_ He was used to being woken up this way, what with his chaotic work schedules and constantly having to readjust his timetable for the day. His life here would have been an impossibility if he, you know, actually went to school, like every other young adult his age.  
  
He'd expected something like, _oi sakata, your shift's going to be from 9 to 3_ _today_ or _gin-saaaAAAaaaAAAaaaN pleASE TAKE oVER FOR ME AT THE DOJO TODAY!!!!_ or even something like, _For today's reading, Libra's exaltation in Saturn spells out that ☆big things☆ are going to happen today. Lucky in love, Libra? Lucky with money? Who knows! Lucky item: green scarf._  
  
Instead, from **shortsugi shitsuke [05:46AM]** , he'd read: katsura's grandmother passed away today.  
  
And he felt cold, soaked down to the bone by a rain different from the one that poured from the sky.  
  
-  
  
Zura and he hardly spoke anymore.  
  
Gintoki had realized it had less to do with unfortunate circumstances, like texts somehow not getting through to his new cell phone number, and more to do with the fact that, well, he did more or less leave Hagi almost overnight, with hardly any word of warning. Gintoki should have expected that.  
  
Zura, though far more forgiving than anyone, of anyone, possessed a biting ability to block people out with frightening totality when he was upset. It wasn't that he was an asshole (though he was, but more of an idiot-asshole than an asshole-asshole) or that he was particularly vengeful (that was Shinsuke's job) - it was that, out of all of them, his heart was easily the most capricious and most tender.  
  
Gintoki supposed it made sense, for Zura to be upset with him the way he was. Zura had better reason to move to Tokyo, after all, what with him gaining entrance to Todai (Gintoki still felt flecks of anger at him for not _taking_ that opportunity - who the hell stays in Hagi just to take care of their grandmother when they've won a one-way ticket to the top school in the country? What fucking idiot _does that?)_  
  
Tokyo should have belonged to Zura first. Not to Gintoki, who moved there on a whim, suddenly exhausted by the country and by too many (absolutely zero) options of choosing any career path offered at any school remotely near where he lived.  
  
Todai should have belonged to Zura, the first in quiet Hagi, in a long while, to have been accepted to so grand a school.  
  
The city and all its glittering, neon-flashing jewels (and soba stands, and duck ponds, and cat cafés, and dog parks, and quirky costume stores) should have belonged to Zura. So, the bitterness made sense. The complete and total halt to everything they had (have?) made sense, for all that it hurt a bit when Gintoki's mind wandered over to Wig-related thoughts.  
  
-  
  
Iwami Kūko Airport is small enough to feel far from hectic, compared to the chaotic disaster that every Tokyo-traveler knows as Narita International. He only loses one bag (which they find rather quickly, in the rolling cart of a bright-eyed teenage girl who'd mistaken Gintoki's strawberry-patterned luggage as her own), and doesn't have to go through any security hassle in spite of his white hair and curious-colored eyes (while he isn't an albino, people of his countenance were rare folk, and minorities of any kind weren't exactly popular by any airport security's standards).  
  
And while most people arrive to find people waiting for them with name cards, with balloons, with flowers and tears, Gintoki finds no one. Which makes sense. He hadn't exactly told anyone he was coming (he'd told Sakamoto to keep his big mouth shut if he knew what was good for him), and if anything, Gintoki is tired of entourages.  
  
The train ride through Shimane down to Yamaguchi is a long three hours (which, in Tokyo time, translates to three minutes - life over there seemed to move at a constant high speed).  
  
As the train passes through, carrying Gintoki with it, away from his new life and back into his childhood, it feels like stepping into old shoes. Plastic, neon-bright tokyo with its smoggy grey skies get painted over with a sky so blue Gintoki marvels at it like one would marvel at the sea. The verdure of forests, of trees, of leaves on branches far older than he breathes life into his lungs, tasting like an oxygen he forgot he'd forgotten. The trees, the sky, the paa-fluff of clouds above his head and the ocean of flowers below pass him by.  
  
And just like that, Gintoki finds himself back home.  
  
-  
  
Although it's barely noon, Hagi is quiet. Which makes sense. It's a weekend. People are grieving. No one needs to come alive just because Gintoki has come back. Ultimately, it's better this way.  
  
Gintoki treks down familiar streets, noting the shallow curves in the roads, noting the rusty street signs and litter-free paths. He walks past the Sakata house, past Shouka Sonjuku, which connects and intersects with it, walks past his favourite tree and once-upon favourite nap spot (replaced now - temporarily - by his spot under the river-bridge a little ways past Kabukichou's borders).  
  
None of it matters now. Not the trees, not the sweet smell that morning June rain leaves lingering upon blade-grass tips, not the houses of everyone he knows.  
  
He comes to a stop at a sleepy street that, to Gintoki, is gleaming under the haze of the sun. Gleaming like everything gleams in memories and dreams. And everything - _everything_ \- is as Gintoki remembers; the smooth wood bearing the name of the house's occupants, the sun-bleached shingles of a tasteful kirizuma roof, the footsteps he himself had worn into the dirt hopping over a cobblestone wall (and, if he closes his eyes, he can see the bruised flowers he'd once left there, the candy wrappers, the little crumpled post-it notes with words he couldn't bring himself to say aloud, all of this perfect and shiny-bright in his mind's eye).  
  
He comes to a stop, raises his fist, knocks one-twice-three times for luck, and waits.  
  
-  
  
(Sakamoto's an asshole. An asshole. An afro-headed _asshole_.  
  
 **bakamoto [12:24AM]:** zuras going to be glad ur there  
  
That message, and all the bakamoto-labeled ones that come after, are ignored without afterthought. Even and especially the one that made Gintoki's chest wring a bit painfully, if he cared to admit it.  
  
 **bakamoto [12:25AM]:** hes not mad u left *hagi* u kno  
 **bakamoto [12:25AM]:** he was just sad that u *left* )  
  
-  
  
The front door slides open, revealing a sadtiredhaggard _beautiful_ Zura behind it.  
  
And Zura's hand falls down, from the door to his side. And his mouth falls open. And his eyes widen like he hasn't fully opened them in days, in weeks, in God knows how long it's been since Gintoki's seen him last.  
  
And Gintoki says, "I'm home," pulling him forward, kissing him full on the mouth. And that, as Katsura stumbles back to breathe and sputter out, stupidly, happily, "Welcome back," -  
  
\- _that_ is what home is like.


End file.
